The Gentlemen and the Roughs

Violence, Honor, and Manhood in the Union Army

Lorien Foote, 0, 0

Publication Year: 2010

"Lorien Foote in The Gentlemen and the Roughs provides a fascinating perspective on the pervasive issues of manhood and honor that served to undermine the cohesion of the Union army . . . Her research, which looks at the social history of military relationships, is invaluable to broadening our overall undertanding of the American Civil War."

Frontmatter

Contents

Acknowledgments

Many colleagues, friends, and students have aided me in the
research and writing of this book. I am grateful for their hard work, support,
and advice, and for the personal and professional courtesy that has been
extended to me over the course of this project. First I must thank those who
offered unusually generous hospitality to me during my...

Introduction The Contested Terms of Manhood

Abraham Lincoln once termed the American Civil War “a people’s
contest.” In contrast to European wars of empire waged by kings and aristocrats,
Lincoln believed, it was the northern people who fought the war...

1. “A Good Moral Regiment” Conduct Unbecoming a Gentleman

John Hartwell was by no means a rich man when he enlisted as a
private in Company C of the 121st New York Volunteers. It would be a stretch
to label him as middle class. He was a thirty-three-year-old carpenter who
lived on a small subsistence farm outside the town of Herkimer, New York...

2. “The Model of the Gentleman”Gentility and Self-Control

Francis Lieber, émigré professor of political philosophy and author of
General Order 100, the code that governed the conduct of Union armies, was
also the north’s expert on gentlemanly behavior. His book on that subject, The...

3. “A Regular Old-Fashioned Free Fight”

Even a cursory reading of Union Army records and the letters and
diaries of Civil War soldiers and officers uncovers the rampant minor tussles
and even brutal fighting that made up every day life in the army. Moral and
self-controlled Union soldiers generally avoided physical confrontations with...

4. “If You Will Go with Me outside the Lines”

In June 1863, Maj. Gen. Ambrose Burnside was in command of the
Department of the Ohio and his headquarters were located in Cincinnati.
Several captains who served on his staff shared an office in departmental
headquarters. On June 18, Capt. Charles Gordon Hutton was seated at a desk...

5. “The Thick-Fingered Clowns”

Northern men pieced together their manly identities in a bewildering
variety of ways. Some men adhered to a strict moral character while
maintaining a sense of honor that required violent retaliation. Other men
defined honor in terms of virtue and viewed traditional honor as a loss of...

6. “The Shoulder-Strap Gentry”

Capt. Daniel Link of the First Maryland Cavalry had posted his
guards over a store near a railroad depot in West Virginia in late December
1864. Carloads of Union soldiers, often drunk or rambunctious, passed
through the depot on their way to the fighting in Virginia. To maintain order
and protect the store, Link gave his guards orders that only three men could...

Conclusion

regiment that exemplified the war for manhood in the Union
Army was the 58th Indiana Volunteer Infantry. The officers and enlisted men
of this unit present a portrait of the different types of men that contended...

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